h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Right i want to calm everything down right now..Goddy and i used to be friends,

*coughs quietly from the corner and straightens his leather jacket*

Hem hem, as a member of this here establishment I'm..... going to run over there and hide

Oy. Jack. Pay attention to the tearoom. Apparently we're saving you 10K.

GodBen I see you posted in the condolence thread for JP2, saying you thought he was a great man even though you disagreed with some of his views. If he was such a great man how come so many Irish women come to London every year seeking abortions. I have met plenty of them where I live, cos there's a large Irish community in Peckham. Having heard their stories at first hand, and that's not to mention Irish gay people that have fled here. I am pleased that old conservative snuffed it! You won't see me calling him a great man!

I don't agree with all his views, but that doesn't take away from from the fact tht he was a great man. While it's true that he held back the introduction of divorce and abortion laws in Ireland about ten years (they'll introduce the abortion one soon enought, I feel), he still did more than I, you, and 99% of humanity could even contemplate doing.

When I hear sentiments like that I always think of some words of your great Irish poet WB Yeats, from The Second Coming:


..The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

But he didn't just believe in bad things. Yes, he was anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, anti-female priests, and so on and so forth and such like. But he was also anti-corporal punishment, anti-violence, he tried to help poor countries, and most importantly, he beleived that people should be free to choose their religious beliefs at a time when the church was opposed to that.

Yes, he may have held back progressive legislation in Ireland for a decade, but that's a good chance that if he didn't visit Ireland back in 79 then the IRA would still be bombing London.

Alright I'll grudgingly conceed he may not have been the worse pope in the world and tried to do a few good things....but I'm sick to the back teeth of the one sided sick making sentimental unintelligent dross that has followed his death on the media and even here on hootoo.

I just hope to goodness that the next one has the balls cos it will be a he, to have the genuine compassion to think about condoms/Aids and birth control thing. I've heard that some liberal Catholics are for this and indeed many of my best friends over the years have been lapsed catholics. I am not anti Catholic, just anti conservative catholic dogma

So am I, but I'm willing to accept his good points and his bad points.

I think one of my biggest problems when these big historical events occur is that I always get the feeling I'm on the outside looking in; ie I become hyper aware that I'm viewing my TV screen, rather than watching it. Any information the TV/radio/computer may give me seems and like a drug...false. This can happen at other times and I use this facility in my art, but it becomes more disturbing when the big events occur cos it feels like everyone has caught some disease except me......... can be a bit lonely.....but I wouldn't swap it for the world.......Does any of this make any sense to you?

I do hope Charles postponing his wedding won't spoil the Grand National

No, none of it makes any sense to me.

As a believing, if not overly devout christian, i would like to thank godben for his condolences about JP2. I didn't agree with him on everything either but he was still a human.


And Red, i agree with you. All these historic happenings just don't feel quite... historic.

>>And Red, i agree with you. All these historic happenings just don't feel quite... historic.<<

See red, that makes sense.

Maybe that's because things don't seem historic until they're history. I'm sure the people who lived through the Cuban missile crisis didn't think it was historic either, they just thought it was bl**dy scary.

Talking to some people who lived through it, i've come to understand they feared for their nonradioactive lives and were sure that either kennedy or khrushchev was going to d***n them and the rest of the planet to a firey death.

I think I'm just too postmodern for words - nevermind. It's just that I have problems taking very seriously anything that's mediated through the media. I remember when Princess Dianna died you'd hear people say...stuff like "Oh yes that's just what Dianna would have wanted!" And I thought how the hell do you know what Dianna would have wanted, she's just a flickering image on your TV or a feature in a magazine.

More to the point, how could you know what she wanted. Shes not you. People generlly aren't predictable. Take me. Raise your hand if you could see me in a serious and heartfelt debate about something. Thank you. Unless she left a will we CAN'T know what she would have wanted.

That's my point Evil, it's hard enough knowing the 'truth' about things and people in RL, but when it comes to things mediated through the mass media it's even harder or near impossible. I was just using the Dianna thing as an example, cos it was another instance where the media went overboard about the death of someone in public life at least over here. The media here was in such a frenzy about worshipping her that some foreign tourist had to spend a night in prison for stealing a teddy bear from one of her impromptu shrines that sprang up everywhere.

Sex, Lies and Videotape, now that's a good film.

Haven't heard of it...

I remember that on the day Diana died they didn't show any ads on Sky One. In their places they showed a blue screen with 'Diana' wrote on it, and it would be on screen for 5 minutes four times an hour! By the end of the day I actually wanted ads back!